


Where We Are

by shomarus



Series: Twenty-Two Angels to Defend Me [23]
Category: Carol (2015), The Price of Salt - Patricia Highsmith
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-22 06:08:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13160862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shomarus/pseuds/shomarus
Summary: Rindy paints a picture.





	Where We Are

**Author's Note:**

> hi! there was actually one more story in this series, this one! i had to type everything on my phone cause my internets out n im using data to post this but its here!! spacing fuckups are here as a result of that, but ill try to fix it when i get computer access again.
> 
> thanks to everyone who’s supported me through this series! thanks for reading!

A yellowish blob formed into some kind of human mess with a mop of brown paint spread atop its head. Rindy stared ar it for a second, then brought out a black pen to messily scrawl ‘Therese’ next to it. There was another yellow blob next to the supposed representation of Therese labeled ‘Mother’. In the front was ‘me’, with a happy little face drawn on with black paint.

Rindy would have to wait for the whole thing to dry before she could present it to Therese and mom. Therese, Rindy thought, somewhat puzzled. Over the course of the Holidays, Rindy had stopped calling Therese her aunt. She was not her aunt in the way that she understood it, understood by watching mother and aunt Abby. Rindy had suspected that they were closer, closer than Abby had ever been with her mom. But who was Therese to her? It was troubling.

She had tried to ask her father about Therese at some point, but his gaze hardened. His gaze hardened, but his voice was so soft, asking her not to talk about it, repeating the idea that he didn’t care. But he did. Nonetheless, Rindy stopped asking. Therese made her mother happy, that much was clear, so surely, there was no reason to wonder.

Happiness. It was in that respect that Rindy liked Christmas with her mother, perhaps even prefered it. The tree was not the large evergreen outside of her home, and the gifts were not exotic pets from places she didn’t quite know how to pronounce. But there was a certain kind of feeling, a sort of homeliness that simply wasn’t present elsewhere. Mom laughed, Therese laughed, and Rindy had fun. Grandma and grandpa, in contrast, loomed over her like ghosts. But Therese and mom were alive in the flesh, alight with happiness and joy.

At some point, Rindy had also asked if she could live with her mother for a time. Dad had said it was not that simple. Nothing was ever ‘simple’ when it came to her parents, she found. She heard certain words thrown around all the time, words that she could only barely grasp and define. Divorce, a split of her family. Injunction, one of the few things that kept Rindy and her mother apart. Carol, a very bitter, regretful thing to say. Her mother’s name.

Though Rindy also supposed that her understanding of the words had changed over time. Divorce was not simply her family splitting apart, it was the thing that allowed her mother to grow happier. Rindy thought back to last Christmas, how she could see shimmering lights in her mother’s sad eyes. But now they were alight with happiness and laughter and Therese.

She wondered if her mother loved Therese. It seemed pointedly obvious in the way they looked at each other, how they snuck in little kisses on the cheek when they thought that she wasn’t looking. The private moments they shared that Rindy felt unsure if she was supposed to bear withness to them or not. Rindy wondered, that if if was the case, why they felt the need to hide it. It didn’t seem particularly right, nor did it feel particularly fair. Rindy picked up the paintbrush and tried to paint a messy pink heart above the three figured.

When the paint finished drying (Rindy passing the time by looking through the book that Santa had also brought her), Rindy took the piece of paper to the kitchen. This was normally something that mother was supposed to do, Rindy knew, but she wanted it to be a surprise. Call it her being a little Santa herself. She pinned the painting to the refrigerator, then trailed back to her room.

She could hear Therese’s astonished gasp and her mother’s excitement when they woke up just a while later. Rindy smiled to herself. This was her family too, a home carved out for themselves.


End file.
